The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps between Plans, Actions, and Results

by Stephen Bungay

In the eighteenth century, the Prussian King Frederick the Great had come closer than anyone has ever done to creating an army of robots. It was highly successful. In the early nineteenth century it met with disaster, and embarked on a program of fundamental change to enable it to cope with an altered environment. The changes it embraced were based on insights into the limits of human knowledge and a view of organizations as organisms rather than machines. Far from throwing out Taylor’s initiative baby and Mintzberg’s planning baby, the Prussians embraced them both and helped them to grow up. The methods they adopted evolved from practical experience and experimentation, so they work. They have since been copied by many modern armies, including the British and American.